[SGVLUG] SCALE5x Booth - Volunteers and Ideas: LinuxDoc and Dumb Terminals

[David Lawyer]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 01:34:04PM -0800, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
[snip]
> I can gaurantee we can't have 16 passes, we get four but we maybe able
> to get slightly more then 4 passes. But remeber from SCALE's point of
> view they are doing us a favor by letting us show off our group, not
> the other way around.
> 
> So I have:
> Greg, Dustin, me, plus one other who I forgot his name but he is not
> on the maillinglist to read this. Speak up if anyone else is willing
> todo 4+ hours of booth time(4 hours each day would be better), and or
> what we are going to talk about other then that we are a lug that
> meets in pasadena.

I just looked up where this is on a paper map and also checked the
Internet for rail connections to get there.  The Westin says it's only
4 blocks from the airport but in fact it's more like 8 if you count
side streets that end at Century Blvd (which the Westin Hotel is on).
It's over a mile from the Westin to the airport entrance and then it
may be over a mile from the entrance to a terminal if you are flying.

And speaking of terminals :-)  What about demonstrating my dumb
terminal at the expo?.  It's 23 years old and is supported by linux
with it's own termcap (for the CIT-101e terminal).  The Co. that made
the terminal went out of business shortly after they made it, but
another much newer terminal went dead on me, so I had to go back to
using this antique.  I use it outside and it's gotten wet in various
rainstorms but still works.  The theme of such an exhibition is that
Linux supports quality antique hardware (and MS doesn't --or do they
??).  I think if MS  does, you have to pay extra for such support.
And anyway, what does MS Windows offer for the command-line interface
except terrible DOS?  Another theme is that you can do a lot with the
command-line interface.  A third theme is that the resolution of
characters on dumb terminals is excellent due to their being
monochrome (with no dots permanently on the screen).

We could pass out propaganda touting the advantages of the command
line interface.  I read some such propaganda aimed at Mac GUI users.
The Mac has optional Linux-like command-line interface to which one
may port linux software, but there are not enough volunteers to do
this right.

Many years ago I had a chance to buy a real teletype cheap.  That
would have been even more interesting to demonstrate.  It had no
electronics and did all digital processing by electro-mechanical means
such as by electro-magnet relays and a spinning distributor for
converting serial data to parallel.

Another theme for the booth could be the strengths and weaknesses of
Linux.  Strengths: free in both cost and access to source code: you
may spend more time getting it to work right but you'll learn more
about computers in the process; works on old hardware.  Weaknesses: A
lot of hardware inadequately supported (if at all).  But this is
sometimes due to hardware companies' refusal to disclose the interface
to their hardware.

Most booths will just be biased hype promoting something by only
emphasizing the positive.  We can be different by covering both sides.
To do this we need someone to write up (or copy something from the
Internet) something short about the above topic(s).  Expect people who
stop by the booth to read it now (without just taking it
to read later).  Then get a discussion going and hope other people
passing by will join in.

What I would personally like to promote is the allegedly obsolete (per
Eric Raymond) LinuxDoc sgml markup.  I would like to promote it as
potentially more powerful and easier than using DocBook xml for
creating documentation, websites, etc.  It needs a maintainer and more
than that, needs more development.  Here's what Eric Raymond says
about it:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The LDP has been phasing out SGML-Tools in favor of DocBook, but it is
still possible you might take over an old HOWTO. These can be
recognized by the identifying header "<!doctype linuxdoc system>". If
this happens to you, convert the thing to XML DocBook and give the old
version a quick burial.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I obviously don't agree.  See my opinion about this at:
http://www.lafn.org/~dave/linux/ld_vs_db.txt

I could have a Linuxdoc template on my dumb terminal for people
walking by to use to create their own html documents.  They could type
them at the booth.  Perhaps they could type a paragraph or two on what
they think of Linux or how they are utilizing it and what problems
they have.  I could then put the html rendition of it on my website
for a while and tell them it'll likely be indexed by various search
engines so the world can find it.  Or perhaps we could put this stuff on
the sgvlug website ?? provided it's interesting.  Any junk would be
deleted.

Question: What word processors do people attending Scale know how to
use: vim, emacs, ??  I checked on the Internet and while I could be
wrong, I think vim is more popular.  Perhaps some only know GUI word
processors ??  In fact, do they know how to type at all?  I suppose so
since Linux is mainly used by servers and the people attending are not
the run-of-the-mill desktop users like for MS Windows.  But due to
space limitations I've never installed emacs on my PC but that's was
when I only had a .2 GB HD.  I've now got a 3GB that's almost full and
haven't bothered to look around for a larger one yet but I do have at
least enough room for emacs if I were to bring my PC.

I'm not sure if my dumb terminal would work OK on someone else's
computer.  It would be interesting to test it.  I revised the
configuration file for this terminal a few times in the 1990s and once
submitted one of these revisions to the then maintainer: Eric Raymond.
But I'm not sure if I sent him the latest revision and it seems that
I'm not now using the latest revision.  Don't know why, but the
terminal seems to work OK.  The config file is complicated and
describes in abbreviated code the hundred or so capabilities of the
dumb terminal and what codes to send to the terminal to activate them.
For example, what codes do you send to get bold reverse video for a
certain phrase?  Normal reverse video ?  Underlining ?  Move the
cursor to x,y (where the actual values of x,y are included in the code
sent to the terminal)?  Etc.  These codes should have been
standardized but the hundreds of different models of dumb terminals
each did their own thing which required a lot of work creating a lot
of config files that are seldom used today.

			David Lawyer